


A Normal Boy

by Littykitty



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Drug Use, M/M, Pining, Richie Tozier Has ADHD, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-16 00:21:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21027170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Littykitty/pseuds/Littykitty
Summary: Richie can't focus on anything. His brain feels like it's vibrating all the time. It's probably just a phase.





	A Normal Boy

**Author's Note:**

> This is a character study of sorts. I just got diagnosed with ADHD as an adult and I'm just tryin to relate to my boy.

Richie Tozier was a hyper little boy, but then weren’t all little boys? Little boys lived to ride their bikes all over town and scrape their knees and say things they shouldn’t. Little boys were made of snips and snails and puppy dog tails. Little boys stuffed frogs in their pockets and ran miles just to feel the wind in their hair. Everybody thought Richie Tozier was just a typical little boy. He was normal, rough and rude and sometimes his mouth seemed to run of it’s own accord but Maggie and Went Tozier knew they just had a normal little hyperactive boy. He would grow out of it. They knew he would grow out of forgetting anything that wasn’t physically attached to him. And so, when Richie made it all the way to school before realizing he’d forgotten to bring his homework or his backpack, or one time, his shoes, they were not so much concerned as much as they were angry. What would people think of them as parents? Letting their son arrive at school without shoes. People would think they were neglecting him. They spent a good hour that afternoon yelling at him about his forgetfulness. When they were done, they were sure Richie would be more careful the next time. Surely a little boy would not forget a thing like his own shoes more than once. 

After the third time, Maggie bought him a second pair of sneakers to keep in his locker at school. Richie remembered to bring both his regular shoes and the spare pair, after leaving them at home for two solid weeks, before his mother placed them directly in his backpack as he was walking out the door. He promptly placed them in his locker and forgot about them. They gradually became buried under several months worth of forgotten homework, old comic books, notes written on scrap pieces of blue lined notebook paper, and rancid old bologna sandwiches that he kept forgetting to eat. That April, Richie’s homeroom teacher called Mrs. Tozier and asked to see her at the school. Richie had earned himself a detention for the seventh time that semester, and Mr. Rassmussen felt a parent-teacher conference was necessary. Richie sat in the hall outside his classroom and eavesdropped as his teacher told her all about how he never stopped fidgeting in class, how he constantly interrupted lectures, drummed his pencils on the desk relentlessly, how he doodled all over textbooks, and how he never remembered any homework. Maggie simply insisted that her son was just being a normal little boy, and it was a phase, and she’d make sure that she and her husband would ensure that Richie found more discipline in his life. When Maggie frog marched her son to his locker to get his things, she was horrified at the state of it, and the smell of moldy bologna made her gag. She stood over him, tapping her toe as she made him shovel armfuls of paper into a garbage can. They didn’t leave the school until the sun had fallen below the horizon, and her son finally had a neat and clean locker. 

“Now, I shouldn’t be getting any more calls about you forgetting your work, there’s no excuse now that your locker is nice and clean.” 

Richie’s locker would be a disaster no less than a week later, but it was out of Maggie’s sight and therefore she paid it no mind. Richie still failed to turn in assignments or pay attention in class, but he scraped by because he was always somehow able to ace the tests. Eddie and Stan always complained that it wasn’t fair. Richie would just shrug, his mouth turned up in a smart ass grin, “We can’t all be as naturally gifted as I am.”

As Richie and his friends moved through middle school, teachers paid him less and less mind. They’d tuck him away in the back of the class and they wouldn’t even bother being disappointed in him when he once again had misplaced his homework. He stopped even trying to do the homework at all, since he knew he’d just lose it sometime between placing the finished piece on his desk and walking into class the next morning. As he got older he didn’t feel like sitting at his desk for hours drumming his pencil and struggling to focus on the sheet in front of them. It was uncomfortable having to re-read the same paragraph in his book and never being able to absorb it. So instead he just learned to be a better liar. He’d sit at the dinner table and promise his parents that he was about to go finish his assignment, then he’d slip out the window and go raise a little hell with his friends. He loved being around his friends, he was just as restless around them, bullshit fell out of his mouth the same around them that it did everywhere else, but at least his friends laughed at whatever he would say. Well, they would laugh about a third of the time, but still it was better than being yelled at. Eddie usually giggled at least, and that made him feel good. 

Richie and Eddie were on the same frequency, he didn’t feel annoying around Eddie. If his brain felt like it was about to vibrate out of his skull, then so was Eddie’s, and their vibrations were in sync. Sometimes Eddie even moved too fast for Richie, and it thrilled Richie more than anything. Then one day Eddie showed up at school with a new little pill in his repetoire, and he was more subdued, and suddenly he didn’t want to fuck around with Richie as much, his patience was gone, his brain wasn’t vibrating anymore. Richie felt alone again. He tried to tell his mother when she found him sitting on his bed in the dark, planning to take a shower but unable to make his limbs move. It happened a lot and Maggie often had to check in and ask him what was taking so long.    
  
“I think there’s something wrong with me.” 

Maggie frowned. She didn’t like talk like that. “Don’t be stupid, you’re just a normal little boy. Now get in the damn shower, it’s almost your bedtime.” 

Suddenly his legs had permission to lift him off the bed and carry him to the bathroom. He stood under the hot spray until it grew cold and he continued standing there until his father pounded on the bathroom door and bellowed, “GODDAMNIT WHAT IS TAKING SO LONG BOY? YOU’RE USING UP ALL THE HOT WATER!” That gave him permission to shut the water off and exit the bathroom. He returned to his bedroom and sat there in just his towel, cold droplets of water rolling down his face. He sat there for two hours, his mind was vibrating again, it felt like his mind was racing and yet blank at the same time. It was four am by the time he managed to fall asleep. Two hours later his alarm would go off, and he would sit there staring at the ceiling until his mother came and yelled at him, then he would be allowed to start his day. 

In his first period class every morning he rolled in late and sat next to Eddie, and it was the only class he could focus in. Unfortunatly Eddie was the subject of his focus. He was a student of the curve of Eddie’s face. A scholar studying the constellation of stars on Eddie’s nose and the suns in Eddie’s eyes. He was a philosopher researching a thesis on the words that spilt from Eddie’s lips. All he did was stare at Eddie and pass notes to Eddie and tug on Eddie’s metaphysical pigtails. He would give his kingdom for a moment of Eddie’s attention. He dared not to dwell on these thoughts, he knew it wasn’t normal to yearn for another boy like this. So he held all the information he gathered close to his heart and didn’t dare talk about it. He tied his affection up into a little bundle and shoved it deep down inside right next to the knowledge that something was wrong with him and his vibrating brain. He didn’t think about it, and also he never stopped thinking about it. His heart burned when Eddie finally stood up to his mother and threw away his pills and that Eddie that was perfectly in sync with his vibrating mind returned. He watched Eddie annoy stan with a paddle ball and flowers bloomed in his soul. He shared a hammock with the other boy and when Eddie prodded his face with a socked foot, something like brilliant sunlight warmed his entire existence. Once they entered high school, Eddie would go back on the pills, and he’d fall back out of sync with Richie. Richie thought that it was probably okay. He figured that if he could take a pill that would quiet his mind, still his ever bouncing leg,make school bearable, allow him to stop picking at his skin until it bleeds and allow him to just do things without his mother yelling at him first, he would probably take it too. 

He wondered if there was a pill that could make him look at girls the way he looks at Eddie. If there was then maybe he could be a normal boy and maybe then his parents wouldn’t look so frustrated with him all the time. 

He picked a scab on his wrist and when orange-red blood began beading out of the small wound, he felt a little bit of peace fall over him. 

Eddie, Bill and Stan left for college in the fall of 1995. Only Richie and Mike were left together in Derry, and the others didn’t call or write, just as Bev and Ben had failed to do several years prior. Richie hadn’t gotten in to school, it turned out that years of lying about missing homework and fudging grades didn’t look so good on one’s transcript. Richie tried his best to be a good citizen in Derry, but he couldn’t seem to keep any job for long. He’d done a stint at the movie theatre and gotten fired for getting distracted in the projector room and starting a small fire. He’d worked at a greasy spoon in town for a while before getting canned after he’d gotten preoccupied at the grill and started a small fire. It took working at a factory and fucking around until he started a large fire for him to load all his things in his creaky old car and get right out of dodge. He headed west into the sunset and never looked back. 

Eventually Richie learned to make a little bit of cash bartending part time. He avoided starting any fires and the comedy club he worked at had an open mike night and Richie found that he was  _ good _ . They seemed to like his restless energy at the club. It seemed to be an asset, and honestly Richie loved the lifestyle. He could party all night long and he was glad that it kept him from staring up at his ceiling and thinking too much. In this environment, Richie Tozier was actually charismatic and people liked him well enough. They were generous with buying him drinks and sharing little pills and powders. Someone shared a little white pill with him once, they said it was ritalin, and he downed the pills happily. They didn’t work, they made everyone else euphoric and restless but he just felt calm. He liked the feeling though, and he would form a small habit for the pills that lasted a few months before he finally found his way to coke. He felt  _ good _ on cocaine. He’d snort a line up his nose and clarity would wash over his brain. He’d feel calm and capable and that was probably a dangerous feeling but if only Maggie and Went could see him now. 

It wasn’t until he was old and had a paunchy belly and thinning hair and frequent nosebleeds and he was a somewhat famous comedian with fat paychecks and a neurotic manager that he finally found himself sitting in a doctor’s office with a diagnosis. He had ADHD. The paper in his hands provided context for every childhood memory he had. His childhood memories were sparse and they seemed to hover just outside the periphery of his consciousness. He couldn’t tell you about any memories in particular but he could feel things clicking into place. He thought of a little boy just like him but twice as cute who took a little pill that made him successful. He felt anger that no parent or teacher had noticed. He remembered feeling dumb and annoying and unwanted. He remembered feeling helpless as he watched himself failing again and again. He couldn’t name any of these memories but he could feel them.

He thought about Eddie that night and wondered how he was. 

He thought of Eddie the next morning and wondered  _ who _ he was. 

Two weeks later he got a call. 


End file.
